Introduction

In many production environments, it is very useful to have the capability
to deploy a new web application, or undeploy an existing one, without having
to shut down and restart the entire container. In addition, you can request
an existing application to reload itself, even if you have not declared it
to be reloadable in the Tomcat server
configuration file.

To support these capabilities, Tomcat includes a web application
(installed by default on context path /manager) that supports
the following functions:

Deploy a new web application from the uploaded contents of a WAR file.

Deploy a new web application, on a specified context path, from the
server file system.

List the currently deployed web applications, as well as the
sessions that are currently active for those web apps.

Reload an existing web application, to reflect changes in the
contents of /WEB-INF/classes or /WEB-INF/lib.

List the OS and JVM property values.

List the available global JNDI resources, for use in deployment
tools that are preparing <ResourceLink> elements
nested in a <Context> deployment description.

Start a stopped application (thus making it available again).

Stop an existing application (so that it becomes unavailable), but
do not undeploy it.

Undeploy a deployed web application and delete its document base
directory (unless it was deployed from file system).

A default Tomcat installation includes the Manager. To add an instance of the
Manager web application Context to a new host install the
manager.xml context configuration file in the
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname] folder. Here is an
example:

If you have Tomcat configured to support multiple virtual hosts
(websites) you would need to configure a Manager for each.

There are three ways to use the Manager web application.

As an application with a user interface you use in your browser.
Here is an example URL where you can replace localhost with
your website host name: http://localhost:8080/manager/html .

A minimal version using HTTP requests only which is suitable for use
by scripts setup by system administrators. Commands are given as part of the
request URI, and responses are in the form of simple text that can be easily
parsed and processed. See
Supported Manager Commands for more information.

Configuring Manager Application Access

The description below uses the variable name $CATALINA_BASE to refer the
base directory against which most relative paths are resolved. If you have
not configured Tomcat for multiple instances by setting a CATALINA_BASE
directory, then $CATALINA_BASE will be set to the value of $CATALINA_HOME,
the directory into which you have installed Tomcat.

It would be quite unsafe to ship Tomcat with default settings that allowed
anyone on the Internet to execute the Manager application on your server.
Therefore, the Manager application is shipped with the requirement that anyone
who attempts to use it must authenticate themselves, using a username and
password that have one of manager-xxx roles associated with
them (the role name depends on what functionality is required).
Further, there is no username in the default users file
($CATALINA_BASE/conf/tomcat-users.xml) that is assigned to those
roles. Therefore, access to the Manager application is completely disabled
by default.

You can find the role names in the web.xml file of the Manager
web application. The available roles are:

manager-gui — Access to the HTML interface.

manager-status — Access to the "Server Status"
page only.

manager-script — Access to the tools-friendly
plain text interface that is described in this document,
and to the "Server Status" page.

manager-jmx — Access to JMX proxy interface
and to the "Server Status" page.

The HTML interface is protected against CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery)
attacks, but the text and JMX interfaces cannot be protected. It means that
users who are allowed access to the text and JMX interfaces have to be cautious
when accessing the Manager application with a web browser.
To maintain the CSRF protection:

If you use web browser to access the Manager application using
a user that has either manager-script or
manager-jmx roles (for example for testing
the plain text or JMX interfaces), you MUST close all windows
of the browser afterwards to terminate the session.
If you do not close the browser and visit other sites, you may become
victim of a CSRF attack.

It is recommended to never grant
the manager-script or manager-jmx
roles to users that have the manager-gui role.

Note that JMX proxy interface is effectively low-level root-like
administrative interface of Tomcat. One can do a lot, if he knows
what commands to call. You should be cautious when enabling the
manager-jmx role.

To enable access to the Manager web application, you must either create
a new username/password combination and associate one of the
manager-xxx roles with it, or add a
manager-xxx role
to some existing username/password combination.
As the majority of this document describes the using the text interface, this
example will use the role name manager-script.
Exactly how the usernames/passwords are configured depends on which
Realm implementation you are using:

UserDatabaseRealm plus MemoryUserDatabase, or MemoryRealm
— The UserDatabaseRealm and MemoryUserDatabase are
configured in the default $CATALINA_BASE/conf/server.xml.
Both MemoryUserDatabase and MemoryRealm read an
XML-format file by default stored at
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/tomcat-users.xml, which can be
edited with any text editor. This file contains an XML
<user> for each individual user, which might
look something like this:

which defines the username and password used by this individual to
log on, and the role names he or she is associated with. You can
add the manager-script role to the comma-delimited
roles attribute for one or more existing users, and/or
create new users with that assigned role.

DataSourceRealm or JDBCRealm
— Your user and role information is stored in
a database accessed via JDBC. Add the manager-script role
to one or more existing users, and/or create one or more new users
with this role assigned, following the standard procedures for your
environment.

JNDIRealm — Your user and role information is stored in
a directory server accessed via LDAP. Add the
manager-script role to one or more existing users,
and/or create one or more new users with this role assigned, following
the standard procedures for your environment.

The first time you attempt to issue one of the Manager commands
described in the next section, you will be challenged to log on using
BASIC authentication. The username and password you enter do not matter,
as long as they identify a valid user in the users database who possesses
the role manager-script.

In addition to the password restrictions, access to the Manager web
application can be restricted by the remote IP address or host
by adding a RemoteAddrValve or RemoteHostValve.
See valves documentation
for details. Here is
an example of restricting access to the localhost by IP address:

The HTML interface is protected against CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery)
attacks. Each access to the HTML pages generates a random token, which is
stored in your session and is included in all links on the page. If your next
action does not have correct value of the token, the action will be denied.
If the token has expired you can start again from the main page or
List Applications page of Manager.

Supported Manager Commands

All commands that the Manager application knows how to process are
specified in a single request URI like this:

http://{host}:{port}/manager/text/{command}?{parameters}

where {host} and {port} represent the hostname
and port number on which Tomcat is running, {command}
represents the Manager command you wish to execute, and
{parameters} represents the query parameters
that are specific to that command. In the illustrations below, customize
the host and port appropriately for your installation.

The commands are usually executed by HTTP GET requests. The
/deploy command has a form that is executed by an HTTP PUT request.

Common Parameters

Most commands accept one or more of the following query parameters:

path - The context path (including the leading slash)
of the web application you are dealing with. To select the ROOT web
application, specify "/". NOTE:
It is not possible to perform administrative commands on the
Manager application itself.

version - The version of this web application as used by
the parallel deployment feature. If you
use parallel deployment wherever a path is required you must specify a
version in addition to the path and it is the combination of path and
version that must be unique rather than just the path.

war - URL of a web application archive (WAR) file, or
pathname of a directory which contains the web application, or a
Context configuration ".xml" file. You can use URLs in any of the
following formats:

file:/absolute/path/to/a/directory - The absolute
path of a directory that contains the unpacked version of a web
application. This directory will be attached to the context path
you specify without any changes.

file:/absolute/path/to/a/webapp.war - The absolute
path of a web application archive (WAR) file. This is valid
only for the /deploy command, and is
the only acceptable format to that command.

directory - The directory name for the web
application context in the Host's application base directory.

webapp.war - The name of a web application war file
located in the Host's application base directory.

Each command will return a response in text/plain format
(i.e. plain ASCII with no HTML markup), making it easy for both humans and
programs to read). The first line of the response will begin with either
OK or FAIL, indicating whether the requested
command was successful or not. In the case of failure, the rest of the first
line will contain a description of the problem that was encountered. Some
commands include additional lines of information as described below.

Internationalization Note - The Manager application looks up
its message strings in resource bundles, so it is possible that the strings
have been translated for your platform. The examples below show the English
version of the messages.

Deploy A New Application Archive (WAR) Remotely

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/deploy?path=/foo

Upload the web application archive (WAR) file that is specified as the
request data in this HTTP PUT request, install it into the appBase
directory of our corresponding virtual host, and start, deriving the name for
the WAR file added to the appBase from the specified path. The
application can later be undeployed (and the corresponding WAR file removed) by
use of the /undeploy command.

This command is executed by an HTTP PUT request.

The .WAR file may include Tomcat specific deployment configuration, by
including a Context configuration XML file in
/META-INF/context.xml.

URL parameters include:

update: When set to true, any existing update will be
undeployed first. The default value is set to false.

tag: Specifying a tag name, this allows associating the
deployed webapp with a tag or label. If the web application is undeployed,
it can be later redeployed when needed using only the tag.

NOTE - This command is the logical
opposite of the /undeploy command.

If installation and startup is successful, you will receive a response
like this:

OK - Deployed application at context path /foo

Otherwise, the response will start with FAIL and include an
error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Application already exists at path /foo

The context paths for all currently running web applications must be
unique. Therefore, you must undeploy the existing web
application using this context path, or choose a different context path
for the new one. The update parameter may be specified as
a parameter on the URL, with a value of true to avoid this
error. In that case, an undeploy will be performed on an existing
application before performing the deployment.

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to start the new web application.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details, but likely explanations include
problems parsing your /WEB-INF/web.xml file, or missing
classes encountered when initializing application event listeners and
filters.

Deploy A New Application from a Local Path

Deploy and start a new web application, attached to the specified context
path (which must not be in use by any other web application).
This command is the logical opposite of the /undeploy command.

This command is executed by an HTTP GET request.
There are a number of different ways the deploy command can be used.

Deploy a previously deployed webapp

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/deploy?path=/footoo&tag=footag

This can be used to deploy a previously deployed web application, which
has been deployed using the tag attribute. Note that the work
directory of the Manager webapp will contain the previously deployed WARs;
removing it would make the deployment fail.

Deploy a Directory or WAR by URL

Deploy a web application directory or ".war" file located on the Tomcat
server. If no path is specified, the path and version are derived
from the directory name or the war file name. The war parameter
specifies a URL (including the file: scheme) for either
a directory or a web application archive (WAR) file. The supported syntax for
a URL referring to a WAR file is described on the Javadocs page for the
java.net.JarURLConnection class. Use only URLs that refer to
the entire WAR file.

In this example the web application located in the directory
/path/to/foo on the Tomcat server is deployed as the
web application context named /footoo.

In this example the ".war" file /path/to/bar.war on the
Tomcat server is deployed as the web application context named
/bar. Notice that there is no path parameter
so the context path defaults to the name of the web application archive
file without the ".war" extension.

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/deploy?war=file:/path/to/bar.war

Deploy a Directory or War from the Host appBase

Deploy a web application directory or ".war" file located in your Host
appBase directory. The path and optional version are derived from the directory
or war file name.

In this example the web application located in a sub directory named
foo in the Host appBase directory of the Tomcat server is
deployed as the web application context named /foo. Notice
that the context path used is the name of the web application directory.

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/deploy?war=foo

In this example the ".war" file bar.war located in your
Host appBase directory on the Tomcat server is deployed as the web
application context named /bar.

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/deploy?war=bar.war

Deploy using a Context configuration ".xml" file

If the Host deployXML flag is set to true you can deploy a web
application using a Context configuration ".xml" file and an optional
".war" file or web application directory. The context path
is not used when deploying a web application using a context ".xml"
configuration file.

A Context configuration ".xml" file can contain valid XML for a
web application Context just as if it were configured in your
Tomcat server.xml configuration file. Here is an
example:

Deployment Notes

If the Host is configured with unpackWARs=true and you deploy a war
file, the war will be unpacked into a directory in your Host appBase
directory.

If the application war or directory is installed in your Host appBase
directory and either the Host is configured with autoDeploy=true or the
Context path must match the directory name or war file name without the
".war" extension.

For security when untrusted users can manage web applications, the
Host deployXML flag can be set to false. This prevents untrusted users
from deploying web applications using a configuration XML file and
also prevents them from deploying application directories or ".war"
files located outside of their Host appBase.

Deploy Response

If installation and startup is successful, you will receive a response
like this:

OK - Deployed application at context path /foo

Otherwise, the response will start with FAIL and include an
error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Application already exists at path /foo

The context paths for all currently running web applications must be
unique. Therefore, you must undeploy the existing web
application using this context path, or choose a different context path
for the new one. The update parameter may be specified as
a parameter on the URL, with a value of true to avoid this
error. In that case, an undeploy will be performed on an existing
application before performing the deployment.

Document base does not exist or is not a readable directory

The URL specified by the war parameter must identify a
directory on this server that contains the "unpacked" version of a
web application, or the absolute URL of a web application archive (WAR)
file that contains this application. Correct the value specified by
the war parameter.

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to start the new web application.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details, but likely explanations include
problems parsing your /WEB-INF/web.xml file, or missing
classes encountered when initializing application event listeners and
filters.

Invalid application URL was specified

The URL for the directory or web application that you specified
was not valid. Such URLs must start with file:, and URLs
for a WAR file must end in ".war".

Invalid context path was specified

The context path must start with a slash character. To reference the
ROOT web application use "/".

Context path must match the directory or WAR file name:

If the application war or directory is installed in your Host appBase
directory and either the Host is configured with autoDeploy=true the
Context path must match the directory name or war file name without
the ".war" extension.

Only web applications in the Host web application directory can
be installed

If the Host deployXML flag is set to false this error will happen
if an attempt is made to deploy a web application directory or
".war" file outside of the Host appBase directory.

List Currently Deployed Applications

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/list

List the context paths, current status (running or
stopped), and number of active sessions for all currently
deployed web applications. A typical response immediately
after starting Tomcat might look like this:

Reload An Existing Application

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/reload?path=/examples

Signal an existing application to shut itself down and reload. This can
be useful when the web application context is not reloadable and you have
updated classes or property files in the /WEB-INF/classes
directory or when you have added or updated jar files in the
/WEB-INF/lib directory.

If this command succeeds, you will see a response like this:

OK - Reloaded application at context path /examples

Otherwise, the response will start with FAIL and include an
error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to restart the web application.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details.

Invalid context path was specified

The context path must start with a slash character. To reference the
ROOT web application use "/".

No context exists for path /foo

There is no deployed application on the context path
that you specified.

No context path was specified

The path parameter is required.

Reload not supported on WAR deployed at path /foo

Currently, application reloading (to pick up changes to the classes or
web.xml file) is not supported when a web application is
deployed directly from a WAR file. It only works when the web application
is deployed from an unpacked directory. If you are using a WAR file,
you should undeploy and then deploy or
deploy with the update parameter the
application again to pick up your changes.

List OS and JVM Properties

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/serverinfo

Lists information about the Tomcat version, OS, and JVM properties.

If an error occurs, the response will start with FAIL and
include an error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to enumerate the system properties.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details.

List Available Global JNDI Resources

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/resources[?type=xxxxx]

List the global JNDI resources that are available for use in resource
links for context configuration files. If you specify the type
request parameter, the value must be the fully qualified Java class name of
the resource type you are interested in (for example, you would specify
javax.sql.DataSource to acquire the names of all available
JDBC data sources). If you do not specify the type request
parameter, resources of all types will be returned.

Depending on whether the type request parameter is specified
or not, the first line of a normal response will be:

OK - Listed global resources of all types

or

OK - Listed global resources of type xxxxx

followed by one line for each resource. Each line is composed of fields
delimited by colon characters (":"), as follows:

Global Resource Name - The name of this global JNDI resource,
which would be used in the global attribute of a
<ResourceLink> element.

If an error occurs, the response will start with FAIL and
include an error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to enumerate the global JNDI
resources. Check the Tomcat logs for the details.

No global JNDI resources are available

The Tomcat server you are running has been configured without
global JNDI resources.

Session Statistics

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/sessions?path=/examples

Display the default session timeout for a web application, and the
number of currently active sessions that fall within one-minute ranges of
their actual timeout times. For example, after restarting Tomcat and then
executing one of the JSP samples in the /examples web app,
you might get something like this:

Actually /sessions and /expire are synonyms for
the same command. The difference is in the presence of idle
parameter.

Start an Existing Application

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/start?path=/examples

Signal a stopped application to restart, and make itself available again.
Stopping and starting is useful, for example, if the database required by
your application becomes temporarily unavailable. It is usually better to
stop the web application that relies on this database rather than letting
users continuously encounter database exceptions.

If this command succeeds, you will see a response like this:

OK - Started application at context path /examples

Otherwise, the response will start with FAIL and include an
error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to start the web application.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details.

Invalid context path was specified

The context path must start with a slash character. To reference the
ROOT web application use "/".

No context exists for path /foo

There is no deployed application on the context path
that you specified.

No context path was specified

The path parameter is required.

Stop an Existing Application

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/stop?path=/examples

Signal an existing application to make itself unavailable, but leave it
deployed. Any request that comes in while an application is
stopped will see an HTTP error 404, and this application will show as
"stopped" on a list applications command.

If this command succeeds, you will see a response like this:

OK - Stopped application at context path /examples

Otherwise, the response will start with FAIL and include an
error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to stop the web application.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details.

Invalid context path was specified

The context path must start with a slash character. To reference the
ROOT web application use "/".

No context exists for path /foo

There is no deployed application on the context path
that you specified.

No context path was specified
The path parameter is required.

Undeploy an Existing Application

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/undeploy?path=/examples

WARNING - This command will delete any web
application artifacts that exist within appBase directory
(typically "webapps") for this virtual host.
This will delete the application .WAR, if present,
the application directory resulting either from a deploy in unpacked form
or from .WAR expansion as well as the XML Context definition from
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ directory.
If you simply want to take an application
out of service, you should use the /stop command instead.

Signal an existing application to gracefully shut itself down, and
remove it from Tomcat (which also makes this context path available for
reuse later). In addition, the document root directory is removed, if it
exists in the appBase directory (typically "webapps") for
this virtual host. This command is the logical opposite of the
/deploy command.

If this command succeeds, you will see a response like this:

OK - Undeployed application at context path /examples

Otherwise, the response will start with FAIL and include an
error message. Possible causes for problems include:

Encountered exception

An exception was encountered trying to undeploy the web application.
Check the Tomcat logs for the details.

Invalid context path was specified

The context path must start with a slash character. To reference the
ROOT web application use "/".

No context exists named /foo

There is no deployed application with the name that you specified.

No context path was specified
The path parameter is required.

Finding memory leaks

The find leaks diagnostic triggers a full garbage collection. It
should be used with extreme caution on production systems.

The find leaks diagnostic attempts to identify web applications that have
caused memory leaks when they were stopped, reloaded or undeployed. Results
should always be confirmed
with a profiler. The diagnostic uses additional functionality provided by the
StandardHost implementation. It will not work if a custom host is used that
does not extend StandardHost.

Explicitly triggering a full garbage collection from Java code is documented
to be unreliable. Furthermore, depending on the JVM used, there are options to
disable explicit GC triggering, like -XX:+DisableExplicitGC.
If you want to make sure, that the diagnostics were successfully running a full
GC, you will need to check using tools like GC logging, JConsole or similar.

If this command succeeds, you will see a response like this:

/leaking-webapp

If you wish to see a status line included in the response then include the
statusLine query parameter in the request with a value of
true.

Each context path for a web application that was stopped, reloaded or
undeployed, but which classes from the previous runs are still loaded in memory,
thus causing a memory leak, will be listed on a new line. If an application
has been reloaded several times, it may be listed several times.

If the command does not succeed, the response will start with
FAIL and include an error message.

Connector SSL/TLS diagnostics

http://localhost:8080/manager/text/sslConnectorCiphers

The SSL Connector/Ciphers diagnostic lists the SSL/TLS ciphers that are currently
configured for each connector. For NIO and NIO2, the names of the individual
cipher suites are listed. For APR, the value of SSLCipherSuite is returned.

Save Configuration

If specified without any parameters, this command saves the current
configuration of the server to server.xml. The existing file will be renamed as
a backup if required.

If specified with a path parameter that matches the path of
a deployed web application then the configuration for that web application will
be saved to an appropriately named context.xml file in the xmlBase
for the current Host.

Request information : Max processing time and processing time,
request and error count, bytes received and sent.

A table showing Stage, Time, Bytes Sent, Bytes Receive, Client,
VHost and Request. All existing threads are listed in the table.
Here is the list of the possible thread stages :

"Parse and Prepare Request" : The request headers are
being parsed or the necessary preparation to read the request body (if
a transfer encoding has been specified) is taking place.

"Service" : The thread is processing a request and
generating the response. This stage follows the "Parse and Prepare
Request" stage and precedes the "Finishing" stage. There is always at
least one thread in this stage (the server-status page).

"Finishing" : The end of the request processing. Any
remainder of the response still in the output buffers is sent to the
client. This stage is followed by "Keep-Alive" if it is appropriate to
keep the connection alive or "Ready" if "Keep-Alive" is not
appropriate.

"Keep-Alive" : The thread keeps the connection open to
the client in case the client sends another request. If another request
is received, the next stage will be "Parse and Prepare Request". If no
request is received before the keep alive times out, the connection will
be closed and the next stage will be "Ready".

"Ready" : The thread is at rest and ready to be
used.

If you are using /status/all command, additional information
on each of deployed web applications will be available.

Using the JMX Proxy Servlet

What is JMX Proxy Servlet

The JMX Proxy Servlet is a lightweight proxy to get and set the
tomcat internals. (Or any class that has been exposed via an MBean)
Its usage is not very user friendly but the UI is
extremely helpful for integrating command line scripts for monitoring
and changing the internals of tomcat. You can do two things with the proxy:
get information and set information. For you to really understand the
JMX Proxy Servlet, you should have a general understanding of JMX.
If you don't know what JMX is, then prepare to be confused.

JMX Query command

This takes the form:

http://webserver/manager/jmxproxy/?qry=STUFF

Where STUFF is the JMX query you wish to perform. For example,
here are some queries you might wish to run:

qry=*%3Atype%3DRequestProcessor%2C* -->
type=RequestProcessor which will locate all
workers which can process requests and report
their state.

qry=Catalina%3Atype%3DEnvironment%2Cresourcetype%3DGlobal%2Cname%3DsimpleValue -->
Catalina:type=Environment,resourcetype=Global,name=simpleValue
which look for a specific MBean by the given name.

You'll need to experiment with this to really understand its capabilities
If you provide no qry parameter, then all of the MBeans will
be displayed. We really recommend looking at the tomcat source code and
understand the JMX spec to get a better understanding of all the queries
you may run.

JMX Get command

The JXMProxyServlet also supports a "get" command that you can use to
fetch the value of a specific MBean's attribute. The general form of
the get command is:

If all goes ok, then it will say OK, otherwise an error message will be
shown. For example, lets say we wish to turn up debugging on the fly for the
ErrorReportValve. The following will set debugging to 10.

Executing Manager Commands With Ant

In addition to the ability to execute Manager commands via HTTP requests,
as documented above, Tomcat includes a convenient set of Task definitions
for the Ant (version 1.4 or later) build tool. In order to use these
commands, you must perform the following setup operations:

Note: The definition of the resources task via the import above will override
the resources datatype added in Ant 1.7. If you wish to use the resources
datatype you will need to use Ant's namespace support to modify
catalina-tasks.xml to assign the Tomcat tasks to their own
namespace.

Now, you can execute commands like ant deploy to deploy the
application to a running instance of Tomcat, or ant reload to
tell Tomcat to reload it. Note also that most of the interesting values in
this build.xml file are defined as replaceable properties, so
you can override their values from the command line. For example, you might
consider it a security risk to include the real manager password in your
build.xml file's source code. To avoid this, omit the password
property, and specify it from the command line:

ant -Dpassword=secret deploy

Tasks output capture

Using Ant version 1.6.2 or later,
the Catalina tasks offer the option to capture their output in
properties or external files. They support directly the following subset of the
<redirector> type attributes:

Attribute

Description

Required

output

Name of a file to which to write the output. If
the error stream is not also redirected to a file or property, it will
appear in this output.

No

error

The file to which the standard error of the
command should be redirected.

No

logError

This attribute is used when you wish to see
error output in Ant's log and you are redirecting output to a
file/property. The error output will not be included in the output
file/property. If you redirect error with the error or errorProperty
attributes, this will have no effect.

No

append

Whether output and error files should be
appended to or overwritten. Defaults to false.

No

createemptyfiles

Whether output and error files should be created
even when empty. Defaults to true.

No

outputproperty

The name of a property in which the output of
the command should be stored. Unless the error stream is redirected to
a separate file or stream, this property will include the error output.

No

errorproperty

The name of a property in which the standard
error of the command should be stored.

No

A couple of additional attributes can also be specified:

Attribute

Description

Required

alwaysLog

This attribute is used when you wish to see the
output you are capturing, appearing also in the Ant's log. It must not be
used unless you are capturing task output.
Defaults to false.
This attribute will be supported directly by <redirector>
in Ant 1.6.3

No

failonerror

This attribute is used when you wish to avoid that
any manager command processing error terminates the ant execution. Defaults to true.
It must be set to false, if you want to capture error output,
otherwise execution will terminate before anything can be captured.
This attribute acts only on manager command execution,
any wrong or missing command attribute will still cause Ant execution termination.

No

They also support the embedded <redirector> element
in which you can specify
its full set of attributes, but input, inputstring and
inputencoding that, even if accepted, are not used because they have
no meaning in this context.
Refer to ant manual for details on
<redirector> element attributes.

Here is a sample build file extract that shows how this output redirection support
can be used:

WARNING: even if it doesn't make many sense, and is always a bad idea,
calling a Catalina task more than once,
badly set Ant tasks depends chains may cause that a task be called
more than once in the same Ant run, even if not intended to. A bit of caution should be exercised when you are
capturing output from that task, because this could lead to something unexpected:

when capturing in a property you will find in it only the output from the first call, because
Ant properties are immutable and once set they cannot be changed,

when capturing in a file, each run will overwrite it and you will find in it only the last call
output, unless you are using the append="true" attribute, in which case you will
see the output of each task call appended to the file.